The Wisdom Of Barnyard Bruke: "PROPANE GAS, CELL TOWERS, AND INDIAN GIVERS"

Greetings to everyone in western Illinois. Well, "the dry spell" is over for now and the weatherman is predicting rainy weather for the next two or three days. There are a lot of farmers that shure hope he's wrong.

Folks south of Quincy had over 4 inches this past weekend. That puts a quick stop to harvest activities in short order.

I hear talk in the coffee shop has it that they are experiencing difficulties in obtaining enough propane fuel to dry their corn.

It seems in a normal harvest, activities for drying grain beginning south in southern areas and working their way gradually northward into the northern areas. Illinois is somewhere in the middle of the mix for dryer gas needs.

This cropping year, with its late harvest, finds many areas, north and south, needing gas at approximately the same time. The wet crop and higher moisture levels are increasing dryer gas usage dramatically.

The delivery system for propane gas with its present infrastructure is not set up to handle and deliver larger volumes to meet needs in all these areas at once.

To compound the problem, larger users are sending trucks to Kansas City, and the like, to get the gas ahead of others, before it hits the pipeline. Supposedly the pipeline is then only able to run at a lesser percentage of its capacity.

With long lines at the elevators and inadequate drying capacity for this abnormal year we are having, all that is needed is another problem to exaggerate the problems for those commercial and farmer drying systems dependent upon propane gas to meet their corn drying needs.

A friend was telling me recently of a contact made with him to place a cell tower on his property.

It seems, among other things, the approval has to be given by the Native American Council. They naturally will receive a fee for inspecting his property for arrowheads or burial grounds etc.

My friend rechecked his deed to the property and found only his name registered at the court house at the county seat.

Well, my friend reasoned, the white chased the Indians out of this territory over 100 years ago. After some fancy political maneuvering the native Americans are now getting even by controlling the white man's projects and getting paid for doing it.

It reminds me of a while back when I met the acquaintance of a fine teenage Indian boy, abeit a little on the fat side for folk his age. During the course of our conversation I asked him if he enjoyed the sport of hunting.

He gave me a disgusting look and proclaimed, "You white folk are all alike. You think Indians live as they did 150 years ago, or at least enjoy the same life style.

"We have been trained well by you white folks and learned our lessons keenly.

"We've got gambling joints to get the money from your weak and vulnerable just as you stole our land thru some of our weak and vulnerable citizenry.

"On top of that you must now come to our native American Tribal Councils for permission, and conduct an expensive survey, before you can ever begin a construction project or build a road."

I never tried to argue with him because somewhere in the good book it says the meek will inherit the earth.